Neutral Milk Hotel hasn't released a new recording in ten years, and yet the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea remains as fresh and inspiring as any indie recordings coming out right now, and established singer and guitarist (and the band's chief songwriter) Jeff Mangum as one of the creative talents of the decade.
Early recordings of the NMH tend to include an amalgam of whoever Mangum was playing with at the time, which is obvious on the EP recording Everything Is (originally released in 1994), but by the time On Avery Island (1996) and Aeroplane (1998) were released, the band had gelled a bit and featured Julian Koster on banjo, bass, and saw; Scott Spillane on horns; and Jeremy Barnes on drums.
If you like R.E.M., Elf Power, Radiohead, Modest Mouse or The Apples in Stereo, you should give NMH a listen.
Here's a video with the song In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
The official Neutral Milk Hotel web site.
Buy Neutral Milk Hotel CDs from Amazon with your purchase benefitting the Public Library Friends.